Malcolm strode forward, aiming down for the coup de grace. He fired, but the white creature leapt up with the grace of an acrobat. The ball gouged the dirt. Cursing, the Scotsman spun away, pulling a long dagger. The thing brought a fist down on Malcolm’s shoulder with an impact that could be heard across the churchyard. The blow pummeled the Scotsman to the ground. The white creature clamped a large, muscular hand around Malcolm’s throat. The man gagged and rolled his eyes up in his head.
“It’s going to break his neck.” Simon seized the white thing’s arm, the one that held Malcolm. The white face turned slowly and regarded Simon with no emotion.
Kate saw Malcolm’s other pistol on the ground near her. She hefted the weapon and rushed forward to where the two men struggled with the creature. She pushed the Lancaster pistol against the thing’s gut and pulled the trigger. The blast wrenched Kate’s arm and she thought her elbow was broken. The shot shook the creature, but it didn’t lessen its hold on Malcolm. She heard the Scotsman gurgling. Kate pulled the trigger again and a second ball exploded into the thing, opening a huge, gaping wound in its stomach. Steaming black gore spilled out, glistening in the moonlight. At least this one’s blood was not laced with acid.
Simon gave an odd throaty laugh and grunted with a great effort. He tore the thing’s arm from its socket, sending a spray of liquid from the ragged shoulder. Malcolm tumbled to the ground. Simon lifted the creature by the neck and threw it nearly twenty feet, where it slammed with a crack against a tree. Malcolm continued to struggle with the disembodied arm whose fingers were embedded in his throat. His face was turning blue.
“Simon,” Kate called. “It’s still strangling him.”
Simon spat out, “Kate, go for the third. Don’t let it leave.”
As Simon began to pry the rigored fingers from Malcolm’s raw flesh, Kate ran for the last creature. The thing was standing up from the fresh grave with a cloth bag in its hand. The mushrooms were gone from the dirt. She reached for her bandolier, but her arm was almost numb from the shock of the pistol. She fumbled a vial out and hurled it. The glass container bounced in the grass without breaking. She cursed and scrabbled for another. The white creature looked at her, then loped toward a low wall, high above Holborn. Kate threw the next vial and it hit the thing squarely and shattered. A bluish mist spread, causing the figure to stagger and jerk spastically. It was no more than a tranquilizer, but she only needed to delay it for a moment. The thing knelt, gasping in the fumes. It began to slip free of its coat.
Kate ran up behind the thing, ready to grab the homunculus if necessary. The creature spun around on its knee and a mass of wormlike appendages burst out of its stomach. The glistening fingers slapped around Kate’s head, sticking like paste. She was pulled down onto her knees and the sword flew from her hands. The wriggling tendrils dragged her forward, scratching as they slithered across her skin. Between the morass of colorless things sliding over her face, she saw a slit opening in the center of the pasty monster’s stomach, stretching into a toothed maw. She struggled harder, wrenching her head back and to the side. The wriggling flagella slid off Kate’s head, clutching instead her shoulders and upper arms. It allowed her a gasping breath. She fought against it, but the tendrils drew her toward the champing orifice. She kicked a booted foot against its groin and shoved back.
“Well done, Kate!” Simon shouted. “Don’t let it get away yet.” He slapped his hand against the creature’s back and whispered. There was a brief flare of light around his hand and the thing’s white skin.
A mechanical clanking sound rang out and two stalks rose above the homunculus’s shoulders. Then the stalks split as if on a hinge on the far end, and extended like a thin telescope to a length of nearly ten feet. Strange fibers began to drop from the long rods, spreading as if unseen spiders were spinning a web that flapped in the wind.
Kate felt Simon’s fingers digging into her shoulders. His strength must have been failing him because she could still hear the wet sounds of the grotesque mouth getting closer. The magician was exhausted and barely standing. He locked eyes with her. He was both fearful and angry. With a last wrench he freed one of her arms.
The long, bony extensions from the creature’s shoulders flapped with a thunderous push of wind. The silky drape thickened into an opaque, fibrous sheet.
“Wings!” Malcolm shouted, and Kate saw a flash of steel just beyond her nose as a blade sliced down into the mass of worms.
She managed to pull her head a few inches away from the slurping maw in the creature’s abdomen, but that was as far as she got. Incredibly Malcolm’s long knife was quickly obscured in squirming tendrils. The hunter tried to pull the weapon free, cursing in Gaelic.